'Thatcher's death and the subsequent coverage of it points to a case being made for the transcendental authority of the social.' Photograph: Graham Turner for the Guardian

In a comment posted last week, one reader appeared baffled by the volume of commentary on Margaret Thatcher, wondering why so much attention is afforded to the dead. Actually, when judged by world-historical standards, modern Britain does not have more mourning traditions than others, though there are examples of societies where death goes almost totally unremarked upon.

Traditionally, some hunter-gatherers in Africa do not make death into an occasion for profound reflection on the person or society. Among the Hadza tribe, for example – for whom there is no clear conception of an afterlife, and for whom social relations are based on egalitarian principles – death is not loaded with the political and existential importance it is for most other peoples. As two of my colleagues at the LSE once put it, what the Hadza case suggests is that "where there is no transcendental authority to be created the dead can be left alone".

We don't leave the dead alone. Clearly. In the past week, Thatcher's death has continued to occupy the nation's and the media's attention. So what might be the transcendental authority here? To answer that question, we can turn to her funeral. This doesn't mean we should assume the transcendental authority is God. I don't intend to speculate here on theology, and I have no intention of reflecting on the tenor of faith on display. But despite the fact that the funeral was very Christian, something else was being communicated in this event.

As Lady Thatcher's coffin was being loaded into the hearse to be driven to Chelsea, Peter Hennessy remarked to David Dimbleby that Thatcher had now passed into the hands of the historians. I dare say the anthropologists, at least, will have something to say first. Because, while Thatcher's death has now been made good, her cultural life continues. Hennessy was certainly right to characterise the ceremonial funeral as a classic rite of passage. As such, it raises a number of important issues about why we talk about the dead, and why we mark the deaths of significant social figures with such pomp and circumstance. It's because when we talk about them, we're talking about ourselves. We're talking about society.

In one respect, Thatcher's death and the subsequent coverage of it points to a case being made for the transcendental authority of the social. This is supremely ironic. Thatcher, as we all know, championed the individual. If you admired Thatcher, this emphasis on the individual signals the values of freedom, personal agency, and personal responsibility. If you didn't admire Thatcher, that emphasis signals the vices of greed, selfishness and the destruction of community.

What is so important about the funeral, then, is how it overcame this divide. Ceremonial funerals are not about individuals. They are about social structures and how they endure. As we were told, again and again by journalists, this was not a memorial service and there was no eulogy. Sure, Thatcher chose the hymns, and the sermon by the bishop of London spoke of Thatcher the person. But the bishop really emphasised what he saw as her political commitment to our "interdependence", to each of us as "members of society". Her infamous remark about there being no such thing as society – as highlighted by Nick Clegg, in his reflections on Thatcher last week, was misunderstood, claimed the bishop.

Maybe, maybe not. In any case, the fact that he chose to highlight this particular remark – out of everything controversial Thatcher said and did – is a very good indication of how the funeral was meant to emphasise commonality. In the sermon, the hymns, the liturgy and reference to her "real remains", in the final address to the coffin – not to Margaret Hilda Thatcher, but, rather, this "Christian soul" – in all of this we have a foregrounding of commonality, of community, of social relations.

"The dead are in a special category," Lord Parkinson said on The Andrew Marr Show this past Sunday. Indeed so. For even in modern Britain, a traditional funeral can give a very clear message of how we highlight the primacy of society in the act of commemoration.

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